SoroushVahidi/scidocs huggingface dataset:
Dual Path Networks
(2017)

In this work, we present a simple, highly efficient and modularized Dual Path Network (DPN) for image classification which presents a new topology of connection paths internally. By revealing the equivalence of the state-of-the-art Residual Network (ResNet) and Densely Convolutional Network (DenseNet) within the HORNN framework, we find that ResNet enables feature re-usage while DenseNet enables new features exploration which are both important for learning good representations. To enjoy the benefits from both path topologies, our proposed Dual Path Network shares common features while maintaining the flexibility to explore new features through dual path architectures. Extensive experiments on three benchmark datasets, ImagNet-1k, Places365 and PASCAL VOC, clearly demonstrate superior performance of the proposed DPN over state-of-the-arts. In particular, on the ImagNet-1k dataset, a shallow DPN surpasses the best ResNeXt-101(64× 4d) with 26% smaller model size, 25% less computational cost and 8% lower memory consumption, and a deeper DPN (DPN-131) further pushes the state-of-the-art single model performance with about 2 times faster training speed. Experiments on the Places365 large-scale scene dataset, PASCAL VOC detection dataset, and PASCAL VOC segmentation dataset also demonstrate its consistently better performance than DenseNet, ResNet and the latest ResNeXt model over various applications.
Improving Online Multiple Object tracking with Deep Metric Learning
(2018)

Tracking by detection is a common approach to solving the Multiple Object Tracking problem. In this paper we show how deep metric learning can be used to improve three aspects of tracking by detection. We train a convolutional neural network to learn an embedding function in a Siamese configuration on a large person re-identification dataset offline. It is then used to improve the online performance of tracking while retaining a high frame rate. We use this learned appearance metric to robustly build estimates of pedestrian’s trajectories in the MOT16 dataset. In breaking with the tracking by detection model, we use our appearance metric to propose detections using the predicted state of a tracklet as a prior in the case where the detector fails. This method achieves competitive results in evaluation, especially among online, realtime approaches. We present an ablative study showing the impact of each of the three uses of our deep appearance metric.
Learning to Rank for Consumer Health Search: A Semantic Approach
(2017)

For many internet users, searching for health advice online is the first step in seeking treatment. We present a Learning to Rank system that uses a novel set of syntactic and semantic features to improve consumer health search. Our approach was evaluated on the 2016 CLEF eHealth dataset, outperforming the best method by 26.6% in NDCG@10.
Adaptive Load Balancing: A Study in Multi-Agent Learning
(1994)

We study the process of multi-agent reinforcement learning in the context of load balancing in a distributed system, without use of either central coordination or explicit communication. We rst de ne a precise framework in which to study adaptive load balancing, important features of which are its stochastic nature and the purely local information available to individual agents. Given this framework, we show illuminating results on the interplay between basic adaptive behavior parameters and their e ect on system e ciency. We then investigate the properties of adaptive load balancing in heterogeneous populations, and address the issue of exploration vs. exploitation in that context. Finally, we show that naive use of communication may not improve, and might even harm system e ciency.
Local connectome phenotypes predict social, health, and cognitive factors
(2018)

The unique architecture of the human connectome is defined initially by genetics and subsequently sculpted over time with experience. Thus, similarities in predisposition and experience that lead to similarities in social, biological, and cognitive attributes should also be reflected in the local architecture of white matter fascicles. Here we employ a method known as local connectome fingerprinting that uses diffusion MRI to measure the fiber-wise characteristics of macroscopic white matter pathways throughout the brain. This fingerprinting approach was applied to a large sample (N = 841) of subjects from the Human Connectome Project, revealing a reliable degree of between-subject correlation in the local connectome fingerprints, with a relatively complex, low-dimensional substructure. Using a cross-validated, high-dimensional regression analysis approach, we derived local connectome phenotype (LCP) maps that could reliably predict a subset of subject attributes measured, including demographic, health, and cognitive measures. These LCP maps were highly specific to the attribute being predicted but also sensitive to correlations between attributes. Collectively, these results indicate that the local architecture of white matter fascicles reflects a meaningful portion of the variability shared between subjects along several dimensions.Author SummaryThe local connectome is the pattern of fiber systems (i.e., number of fibers, orientation, and size) within a voxel, and it reflects the proximal characteristics of white matter fascicles distributed throughout the brain. Here we show how variability in the local connectome is correlated in a principled way across individuals. This intersubject correlation is reliable enough that unique phenotype maps can be learned to predict between-subject variability in a range of social, health, and cognitive attributes. This work shows, for the first time, how the local connectome has both the sensitivity and the specificity to be used as a phenotypic marker for subject-specific attributes.
Python for Microwave and RF Engineers [Application Notes]
(2011)

Python is a powerful programming language for handling engineering and scientific computational tasks efficiently [1]-[5]. Used by companies such as Google and Intel and by organizations including NASA and Los Alamos National Laboratory, it offers an extremely wide selection of tools for tasks such as scientific computing, signal processing, Web site construction, database programming, and graphical user interface (GUI) design. The language is platform independent with most programs running on Linux, Microsoft Windows, or MAC OS virtually unchanged. Python has been distributed as a part of Open Source Initiative, and most versions are General Public License (GPL) compatible. In microwave and radio frequency (RF) engineering, it can be used for numerical programming, automated RF testing, automated monolithic microwave integrated-circuit (MMIC) layout generation, automated netlist generation and simulator sequencing, and other tasks. In this article, we are going to provide examples demonstrating the application areas of Python in microwave and RF engineering. We are also going to give a brief introduction to the language highlighting its salient features.
Create Your Own Internet of Things: A survey of IoT platforms.
(2017)

We live in the age of After Google (AG), where information is just one click away and talking just one touch away. The near future of the AG age is the Internet of Things (IoT), where physical things connected over a network will take part in Internet activities to exchange information about themselves and their surroundings. In other words, the IoT is nothing but a computing concept in which everyday objects with embedded hardware/devices are connected to a network or are simply online.
Model Checking Interlocking Control Tables
(2010)

A challenging problem for model checking is represented by railway interlocking systems. It is a well known fact that interlocking systems, due to their inherent complexity related to the high number of variables involved, are not amenable to automatic verification, typically incurring in state space explosion problems. The literature is however quite scarce on data concerning the size of interlocking systems that have been successfully proved with model checking techniques. In this paper we attempt a systematic study of the applicability bounds for general purpose model checkers on this class of systems, by studying the typical characteristics of control tables and their size parameters. The results confirm that, although small scale interlocking systems can be addressed by model checking, interlockings that control medium or large railway yards can not, asking for specialized verification techniques.
Image Segmentation and Classification of MRI Brain Tumor Based on Cellular Automata and Neural Networks
(2013)

This paper proposes segmentation of MRI brain tumor using cellular automata and classification of tumors using Gray level Co-occurrence matrix features and artificial neural network. In this technique, cellular automata (CA) based seeded tumor segmentation method on magnetic resonance (MR) images, which uses volume of interest (VOI) and seed selection. Seed based segmentation is performed in the image for detecting the tumor region and then highlighting the region with help of level set method. The brain images are classified into three stages that are normal, benign and malignant. For this non knowledge based automatic image classification, image texture features and Artificial Neural Network are employed. The conventional method for medical resonance brain images classification and tumors detection is by human inspection. Decision making was performed in two stages: feature extraction using Gray level Co-occurrence matrix and the classification using Radial basis function which is the type of ANN. The performance of the ANN classifier was evaluated in terms of training performance and classification accuracies. Artificial Neural Network gives fast and accurate classification than other neural networks and it is a promising tool for classification of the tumors.
FlowTime: Dynamic Scheduling of Deadline-Aware Workflows and Ad-Hoc Jobs
(2018)

With rapidly increasing volumes of data to be processed in modern data analytics, it is commonplace to run multiple data processing jobs with inter-job dependencies in a datacenter cluster, typically as recurring data processing workloads. Such a group of inter-dependent data analytic jobs is referred to as a workflow, and may have a deadline due to its mission-critical nature. In contrast, non-recurring ad-hoc jobs are typically best-effort in nature, and rather than meeting deadlines, it is desirable to minimize their average job turnaround time. The state-of-the-art scheduling mechanisms focused on meeting deadlines for individual jobs only, and are oblivious to workflow deadlines. In this paper, we present FlowTime, a new system framework designed to make scheduling decisions for workflows so that their deadlines are met, while simultaneously optimizing the performance of ad-hoc jobs. To achieve this objective, we first adopt a divide-and-conquer strategy to transform the problem of workflow scheduling to a deadline-aware job scheduling problem, and then design an efficient algorithm that tackles the scheduling problem with both deadline-aware jobs and ad-hoc jobs by solving its corresponding optimization problem directly using a linear program solver. Our experimental results have clearly demonstrated that FlowTime achieves the lowest deadline-miss rates for deadline-aware workflows and 2-10 times shorter average job turnaround time, as compared to the state-of-the-art scheduling algorithms.
The Finite Element Method with Anisotropic Mesh Grading for Elliptic Problems in Domains with Corners and Edges
(1998)

This paper is concerned with a specific finite element strategy for solving elliptic boundary value problems in domains with corners and edges. First, the anisotropic singular behaviour of the solution is described. Then the finite element method with anisotropic, graded meshes and piecewise linear shape functions is investigated for such problems; the schemes exhibit optimal convergence rates with decreasing mesh size. For the proof, new local interpolation error estimates for functions from anisotropically weighted spaces are derived. Finally, a numerical experiment is described, that shows a good agreement of the calculated approximation orders with the theoretically predicted ones. ( 1998 B. G. Teubner Stuttgart—John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
Procedural Generation of Parcels in Urban Modeling
(2012)

We present a method for interactive procedural generation of parcels within the urban modeling pipeline. Our approach performs a partitioning of the interior of city blocks using user-specified subdivision attributes and style parameters. Moreover, our method is both robust and persistent in the sense of being able to map individual parcels from before an edit operation to after an edit operation this enables transferring most, if not all, customizations despite small to large-scale interactive editing operations. The guidelines guarantee that the resulting subdivisions are functionally and geometrically plausible for subsequent building modeling and construction. Our results include visual and statistical comparisons that demonstrate how the parcel configurations created by our method can closely resemble those found in real-world cities of a large variety of styles. By directly addressing the block subdivision problem, we intend to increase the editability and realism of the urban modeling pipeline and to become a standard in parcel generation for future urban modeling methods.
TOM-Net: Learning Transparent Object Matting from a Single Image
(2018)

This paper addresses the problem of transparent object matting. Existing image matting approaches for transparent objects often require tedious capturing procedures and long processing time, which limit their practical use. In this paper, we first formulate transparent object matting as a refractive flow estimation problem. We then propose a deep learning framework, called TOM-Net, for learning the refractive flow. Our framework comprises two parts, namely a multi-scale encoder-decoder network for producing a coarse prediction, and a residual network for refinement. At test time, TOM-Net takes a single image as input, and outputs a matte (consisting of an object mask, an attenuation mask and a refractive flow field) in a fast feed-forward pass. As no off-the-shelf dataset is available for transparent object matting, we create a large-scale synthetic dataset consisting of 178K images of transparent objects rendered in front of images sampled from the Microsoft COCO dataset. We also collect a real dataset consisting of 876 samples using 14 transparent objects and 60 background images. Promising experimental results have been achieved on both synthetic and real data, which clearly demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach.
Reinforcement Learning: A Review from a Machine Learning Perspective
(2014)

Machine Learning is the study of methods for programming computers to learn. Reinforcement Learning is a type of Machine Learning and refers to learning problem which allows machines and software agents to automatically determine the ideal behaviour within a specific context, in order to maximize its performance. RL is inspired by behaviourist psychology based on the mechanism of learning from rewards and does not require prior knowledge and automatically get optimal policy with the help of knowledge obtained by trial-and-error and continuous interaction with the dynamic environment. This paper provides the overview of Reinforcement Learning from Machine learning perspective. It discusses the fundamental principles and techniques used to solve RL problems. It presents nature of RL problems, with focus on some influential model free RL algorithms, challenges and recent trends in theory and practice of RL. It concludes with the future scope of RL.
Bootstrapping coreference resolution using word associations
(2011)

In this paper, we present an unsupervised framework that bootstraps a complete coreference resolution (CoRe) system from word associations mined from a large unlabeled corpus. We show that word associations are useful for CoRe – e.g., the strong association between Obama and President is an indicator of likely coreference. Association information has so far not been used in CoRe because it is sparse and difficult to learn from small labeled corpora. Since unlabeled text is readily available, our unsupervised approach addresses the sparseness problem. In a self-training framework, we train a decision tree on a corpus that is automatically labeled using word associations. We show that this unsupervised system has better CoRe performance than other learning approaches that do not use manually labeled data.
A simplified extension of the Area under the ROC to the multiclass domain
(2006)

The Receiver Operator Characteristic (ROC) plot allows a classifier to be evaluated and optimised over all possible operating points. The Area Under the ROC (AUC) has become a standard performance evaluation criterion in two-class pattern recognition problems, used to compare different classification algorithms independently of operating points, priors, and costs. Extending the AUC to the multiclass case is considered in this paper, called the volume under the ROC hypersurface (VUS). A simplified VUS measure is derived that ignores specific intraclass dimensions, and regards inter-class performances only. It is shown that the VUS measure generalises from the 2-class case, but the bounds between random and perfect classification differ, with the lower bound tending towards zero as the dimensionality increases. A number of experiments with known distributions are used to verify the bounds, and to investigate a numerical integration approach to estimating the VUS. Experiments on real data compare several competing classifiers in terms of both error-rate and VUS. It was found that some classifiers compete in terms of error-rate, but have significantly different VUS scores, illustrating the importance of the VUS approach.
An Improved Lexicographical Sort Algorithm of Copy-move Forgery Detection
(2011)

As a technique for digital image tampering, copy-move forgery is frequently used. In this paper, an improved lexicographical sort algorithm based on discrete cosine transform (DCT) is developed to detect copy-move forgery. Firstly, the image is split into 8*8 blocks, and the image data undergoes a DCT. Then the DCT coefficients were grouped to reduce the dimension according to the frequency property. Finally, the distance of eigenvectors, instead of the DCT coefficients, was taken as the eigenvalue to fulfill the block matching. Experiments results showed that the false matching ratio of the proposed algorithm was reduced while the detecting ability was maintained.
An Empirical Study of Rich Subgroup Fairness for Machine Learning
(2019)

Kearns, Neel, Roth, and Wu [ICML 2018] recently proposed a notion of rich subgroup fairness intended to bridge the gap between statistical and individual notions of fairness. Rich subgroup fairness picks a statistical fairness constraint (say, equalizing false positive rates across protected groups), but then asks that this constraint hold over an exponentially or infinitely large collection of subgroups defined by a class of functions with bounded VC dimension. They give an algorithm guaranteed to learn subject to this constraint, under the condition that it has access to oracles for perfectly learning absent a fairness constraint. In this paper, we undertake an extensive empirical evaluation of the algorithm of Kearns et al. On four real datasets for which fairness is a concern, we investigate the basic convergence of the algorithm when instantiated with fast heuristics in place of learning oracles, measure the tradeoffs between fairness and accuracy, and compare this approach with the recent algorithm of Agarwal, Beygelzeimer, Dudik, Langford, and Wallach [ICML 2018], which implements weaker and more traditional marginal fairness constraints defined by individual protected attributes. We find that in general, the Kearns et al. algorithm converges quickly, large gains in fairness can be obtained with mild costs to accuracy, and that optimizing accuracy subject only to marginal fairness leads to classifiers with substantial subgroup unfairness. We also provide a number of analyses and visualizations of the dynamics and behavior of the Kearns et al. algorithm. Overall we find this algorithm to be effective on real data, and rich subgroup fairness to be a viable notion in practice.
Deep transfer learning with ontology for image classification
(2015)

Purely, data-driven large scale image classification has been achieved using various feature descriptors like SIFT, HOG etc. Major milestone in this regards is Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) based methods which learn optimal feature descriptors as filters. Little attention has been given to the use of domain knowledge. Ontology plays an important role in learning to categorize images into abstract classes where there may not be a clear visual connect between category and image, for example identifying image mood - happy, sad and neutral. Our algorithm combines CNN and ontology priors to infer abstract patterns in Indian Monument Images. We use a transfer learning based approach in which, knowledge of domain is transferred to CNN while training (top down transfer) and inference is made using CNN prediction and ontology tree/priors (bottom up transfer ). We classify images to categories like Tomb, Fort and Mosque. We demonstrate that our method improves remarkably over logistic classifier and other transfer learning approach. We conclude with a remark on possible applications of the model and note about scaling this to bigger ontology.
Multi-view 3D Object Detection Network for Autonomous Driving
(2017)

This paper aims at high-accuracy 3D object detection in autonomous driving scenario. We propose Multi-View 3D networks (MV3D), a sensory-fusion framework that takes both LIDAR point cloud and RGB images as input and predicts oriented 3D bounding boxes. We encode the sparse 3D point cloud with a compact multi-view representation. The network is composed of two subnetworks: one for 3D object proposal generation and another for multi-view feature fusion. The proposal network generates 3D candidate boxes efficiently from the birds eye view representation of 3D point cloud. We design a deep fusion scheme to combine region-wise features from multiple views and enable interactions between intermediate layers of different paths. Experiments on the challenging KITTI benchmark show that our approach outperforms the state-of-the-art by around 25% and 30% AP on the tasks of 3D localization and 3D detection. In addition, for 2D detection, our approach obtains 14.9% higher AP than the state-of-the-art on the hard data among the LIDAR-based methods.